Audra McDonald @ Colonial Theatre, 6/15/13

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — About an hour into her soldout, 90-minute concert at The Colonial Theatre on Saturday night, the remarkable Broadway singer and actress Audra McDonald was feeling impish, and she performed a pair of lieder by the young Brooklyn composer Gabriel Kahane, who wrote music for poems he adapted from postings on Craigslist.

“You looked sexy even though you were having a seizure (in Walgreens),” she sang at the beginning of one. In the second, the singer assumed the persona of a person desperately searching for the name of a spicy pepper sandwich spread she bought from a Catskills farmstand. They’re amusing little tunes and surely would be funny even in a noisy bar or party. Elevated to the formality of a concert by one of the most talented and lauded singer-actresses working today, the lieder became hilarious demonstrations of a performer in such stunning command of her talents that she could immediately afterward, without even a transitional word, launch into a thunderous, heartbreaking rendition of “Maybe This Time” from “Cabaret.”

It’s a superb song, one of Kander and Ebb’s best, and McDonald let it rip, employing the full spectrum of her voice, from her operatic-soprano top notes down to a throaty chest voice with full-throttle sob and soar.

That juxtaposition, from witty ditty to Broadway magnificence, perfectly encapsulated McDonald’s range. She’s at once the epitome of classically trained elegance and funny best friend, and she’s got such a genuine, engaging stage presence that a concert feels like a conversation. She performed 18 songs, introducing most with short, illuminating and often entertaining stories, each of just the right length and pertinence.

Her daughter, now on the cusp of her teenage years, once said, “Mommy, your singing makes my ears cry,” and she refused to see her mother’s triumphant Broadway turn as the female lead in “Porgy & Bess” because, well, Bess is a drug-addicted prostitute. McDonald used the story as an introduction to a pair of shimmering lullabies, “Whose Angry Little Man” from “Raisin,” a musical adaptation of the drama “A Raisin in the Sun,” and “Baby Mine,” from Disney’s “Dumbo.”

They’re lesser-known songs, which McDonald prefers. “I don’t like to sing songs everybody sings,” she said. To that end, accompanied by her music director, Andy Einhorn on piano, she performed “When Did I Fall in Love” from “Fiorello,” “Stars and the Moon” from “Songs for a New World” and, from the team of Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich, a comedic number about the perils of trying to date men from a certain mid-Atlantic city. Sample lyrics: “do avoid REO Speedwagon-loving, Christopher Walken-imitating actors originally from Baltimore who can’t piss unless their shrink says its OK.”

But McDonald also did terrific versions of more popular standards, including Al Jolson’s “My Buddy,” a pristine, show-closing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and, with the audience at full voice on command, “I Could Have Danced All Night.”

Music review
Audra McDonaldWhen: 8 p.m. SaturdayWhere: Colonial Theatre, 111 South St., Pittsfield, Mass.Length: 90 minutes, no intermissionHighlights: “Maybe This Time” from “Cabaret,” a pair of new lieder set to terrible poems found on Craigslist, singing with the crowd on “I Could Have Danced All Night” from “My Fair Lady”The crowd: Sold out, about 800, enthusiastically appreciative